FLINT TOWNSHIP, MI -- When he was working on his Academy Award-nominated screenplay “Finding Neverland,” Flint Township native David Magee came across a book he couldn’t put down.

The book was “Life of Pi,” the Man Booker Prize-winning book by Yann Martel.

Magee couldn't envision it on the big screen but showed it to "Neverland" director Marc Foster anyway.

“He said, ‘Is it a film?’ I said no.”

He wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Magee said several others in the movie industry had tried to adapt the story of a boy stranded on a life boat with a tiger but had given up.

“Just the logistics made it very difficult,” he said.

Then he got a phone call from his agent who told him Ang Lee, director of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” among others, wanted to adapt it.

He decided to go for it.

“I was less concerned that we got to see it through than that I got to work with him,” Magee said.

He describes “Life of Pi” as a story about a boy who is struggling with big questions about life, and immersing himself in different faiths as he tries to find answers.

“We were trying to find ways that would show how this boy came to fall in love with all these different stories and religions as he came of age,” he said, an idea that presented a challenge as he didn’t want the movie to feel “like a philosophy lesson.”

"Life of Pi" is divided into three parts, and it was the second that offered the biggest challenge.

When Pi and his family decide to leave India and travel with some of their animals, Pi ends up stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger.

In some ways, he said that section of the story was easier to condense in that there wasn’t as much dialogue -- but it also presented challenges because, well, there wasn’t much dialogue.

And films need dialogue.

“He does record a thought in a journal entry now and then and he does talk to the tiger now and then,” Magee said, adding that his challenge as a writer was showing Pi’s thoughts and feelings through actions instead of words.

In the end, he was happy with the result -- and so were others.

The Huffington Post called the movie "one of the year's strongest films" and The Hollywood Reporter said called Magee's adaptation a "nimble and faithful script" that "packs a good deal of character and cultural background into the first half-hour."

Despite his success writing, Magee started out as an actor.

His childhood, he said, was spent doing productions with Flint Community Players. He went to Michigan State University, studying theater, and after graduate school pursued a career as an actor.

To make ends meet, he did voiceover work, and recorded audiobooks. It was reading those novels that led him to where he is today.

When he was done reading the full version of a book he would read shorter, abridged versions, and he noticed a trend: they were terrible.

“I said to the producer, ‘This abridgement is horrible.’ And he said, ‘Do you want to abridge it? We need abridgers.’ ... And so I began abridging, and over the course of five years I abridged 80 novels,” he said.

Whether he realized it at the time or not, he was learning something all screenwriters needed to know—how to tell a story quickly and efficiently.

“There’s a thought process that goes into distilling the essence of a book that I learned,” he said. “So later when I wanted to try screenplays, that helped.”

His first screenplay was based on a play and became the movie that would star Johnny Depp, “Finding Neverland.”

Not a bad first gig.

It led to his work on “Life of Pi,” and thought he said he enjoys adapting, he’s looking to do some of his own things.

“I have gone back and forth. I’m more and more interested in writing my own things but I’ve been very lucky that once “Neverland” took off to work on projects that have been offered to me,” he said.

He’s not giving details on those projects just yet beyond saying he’s working on a story with Dreamworks and is looking at “loosely” adapting another book for a TV series.

Regardless, he said making the switch from acting to writing was the right choice for him.

“I’m not the kind of person who really likes to be looked at all the time. I was not naturally an actor…I am naturally a hermit who sits in his room and types all day,” he said.

Life of Pi hits theaters Nov. 21.

Scott
Atkinson is an entertainment reporter for the Flint Journal and can be reached
at (810) 262-0216 or at satkins1@mlive.com. You can also follow Scott on Facebook
or Twitter.